The Moscow to Washington Pipeline
Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that the Young Republicans were carrying water for the Kremlin
For the second time in as many months, the Young Republicans are finding themselves in the news for all of the wrong reasons.
Social media posts by Ukraine-focused analysts and journalists, including Kateryna Lisunova and Michael D. Weiss, say that Young Republican operatives helped facilitate the meetings and allege that New York Young Republican chapters paid for travel by officials tied to the Russian Orthodox Church. Public reporting confirms that the Young Republican National Federation coordinated Capitol Hill access. The funding claim itself has not been independently verified.
The Russian Orthodox Church is the official state church of Russia. As Quinton describes it, “Analysts, watchdogs, and human rights critics have repeatedly described the church’s senior leadership as part of Russia’s broader influence apparatus.” The Russian Orthodox Church has become appealing to a certain type of right-wing activist as being a “masculine” church.
So it was no surprise that an affiliated group, “The Saint John Society of Shanghai,” with ties to the Russian Church, teamed up with the far-right New York Young Republican Club to bring Russia’s point of view to Capitol Hill.1
The connection nexus between Russia and the YR’s turns out to be Young Republican National Federation Vice-Chair Catherine Whiteford.
Whiteford took on the role, seemingly, of lead organizer and emcee of Wednesday’s event.
It’s not a coincidence that the three Members of Congress mentioned here by Whiteford, Crane, Anna Paulina Luna, and Derrick Van Orden, either have strong ties to Russia or have frequently parroted Russian talking points.
So why does Catherine Whiteford care?
Whiteford’s father is a Russian Orthodox Priest: Archpriest John Whiteford. John Whiteford is a former protestant-turned Orthodox Priest who has a flock of 200 people in the Houston area. Whiteford’s church is affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). That group was once independent, but in 2007 reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church proper at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself. John Whiteford was one of the representatives of ROCOR who made the unification with Moscow happen.
The Archpriest was featured in a Texas Monthly article in 2023 and it was, shall we say, rather shocking some of the things that Whiteford was preaching to his flock.
“Bad theology leads to bad actions,” he told his congregants. “And people wind up getting hurt.” The notion that the U.S. must support Jews and Israel to receive God’s blessing is, he said, new to Christianity, unfolding from dispensationalist theology that became popular in the early twentieth century. “Most evangelicals think that the modern state of Israel and the Israel they read about in the Bible are the very same thing,” he said.
This, he argued, is a mistake. The majority of Jews in Israel, he explained, are unbelievers, and it’s Christians who will inherit the blessing that God bestowed on Abraham.
It doesn’t get any better from there:
Whiteford and many of his peers, by contrast, are converts to Orthodoxy, and though Whiteford says he stays out of purely political discussions, others in his orbit have used their faith and online megaphones to further the cause of far-right politics. Some of them have found common cause with the Confederacy, fascism, monarchism, and white supremacy.
On X, formerly Twitter, he posts and reposts content that is critical of Israel, expresses skepticism of U.S. support of Ukraine in its war with Russia, and pushes various reactionary talking points.
During a recent talk in North Carolina, he spoke of the spiritual benefits of agrarianism and asserted that the legacy of the Confederacy has been misconstrued—he believes the Civil War wasn’t primarily fought over slavery. “Bad things happened, and we should never defend those things,” he noted. “But it would be the height of ingratitude for me to throw my ancestors under the bus, particularly when I don’t have any reason to believe that they did anything that they understood to be wrong, at least not in a grossly immoral way.
Michael Sisco, a 36-year-old member of Whiteford’s parish, grew up Pentecostal and then dabbled in the occult, Islam, and Mormonism before converting to Orthodoxy, in 2014. In recent years he has acknowledged being friends with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes; boasted that he named his cat after Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s wife; and stated that the terms “Christo-fascist” and “Christian nationalist” are “cool”—though he told me via direct message on X that some of the things he says are“obvious jokes.” In recent months Sisco, who has called Texas Republicans “gay” for opposing antisemitism, has begun advocating for Jews in Israel to move to the Russian Far East. Whiteford, who has appeared on Sisco’s podcast for friendly conversations, says these comments are “an example of [Michael’s] humor. . . [He] is working on a book appealing to non-Christian Jews to convert, and so clearly he doesn’t hate them as people or as an ethnicity.”
Whiteford disputed the story (four months later). It seems to be something other than a coincidence that Whiteford’s words line up directly not only with Russian talking points but with the social media propaganda being propagated by Russian actors for an American audience.2 Especially when you consider that Whiteford was integral to the reunification of ROCOR with the Russian Church and how Patriarch Kirill is his primate.3 And the Russian Orthodox Church has served as a useful tool for Russian intelligence and political operations aimed at Americans.
Putin knew exactly what he was doing.
The Whitefords and this group of far-right, Russian-aligned activists continue to claim that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being “persecuted” by the Ukrainian Government. “The organizers are calling for the repeal of Ukraine's Law 3894-IX, which has effectively outlawed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
Except that isn’t true either.
Ukraine’s Law 3894-IX, widely known as the law "on the protection of the constitutional order in the sphere of activities of religious organizations," represents a historic pivot in the nation’s spiritual and political landscape. Formally signed into effect in August 2024, the legislation provides a legal framework to ban religious groups associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, which Kyiv views as an instrument of Russian influence and aggression. While the law does not target individual faith, it mandates that any organization with administrative links to centers in "aggressor states" must sever those ties or face liquidation.
Regardless of your beliefs, this law does not impact the ability to practice the faith. It does, however, place limits on organizations used for political purposes antithetical to Ukrainian religious and political freedom.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church declared its independence from Moscow after Russian Patriarch Kirill came out in favor of the invasion. With the Russian Orthodox Church firmly under the thumb of the Russian Government, it made no sense for Ukrainians to stay in a church that sought their national subjugation.
One group that rejects the independence of the Ukrainian Church? The Russian Orthodox Church. Go figure.
Confusing the issue even more? Most Orthodox in Ukraine have abandoned the Russian-affiliated church entirely. Seventy-five percent of Ukrainians are either affiliated with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine4 or are just non-specifically Orthodox.5 6The Ukrainian Orthodox Church consists of four percent of the population. Still about 1 million people.
So what we have here are Young Republican National leaders taking religious leaders from a church under the thumb of Moscow to Congress to meet with Russian sympathizers to lie about the religious liberty of Ukrainians.
Speaking of religious liberty, I wonder if any of these religious and political leaders voiced concerns with the harsh religious conditions Russian aggressors are putting on occupied Ukrainians? Such as:
Russian occupation authorities have closed, restricted, or forced out hundreds of religious communities, dramatically reducing the number of functioning congregations.
Many non-Moscow-aligned churches and faith groups face de-registration, closure, or extreme bureaucratic hurdles to operate.
Russian confiscation of worship spaces, sealing of churches, and the arrest, expulsion, or even killing of clergy and faithful for their religious activities.
Pressuring religious leaders to cooperate with Russian authorities or face punitive consequences.
Russian authorities have imposed Russian legal frameworks in occupied regions, includingthe classification of certain groups (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses) as “extremist,” effectively banning them.
Requirements for “state religious expert evaluations,” forced re-registration, and other administrative controls are tools used to control religious life and marginalize dissenting believers.
The Russian Orthodox Church was promoted as part of a broader effort to impose cultural and ideological influence with state support.
The de-Ukrainization and control of civil society, where expression of Ukrainian identity or non-aligned religious belief is increasingly suppressed under occupation.
However, I suppose those Russian Orthodox religious leaders, including those in the United States, are less concerned about that. Especially, as we discussed above, the ROCOR is practically an arm of the Russian government.
I think we are all concerned about religious freedom wherever those believers may be. But it appears that the concern with the religious freedom of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is based less on the religious freedom and more on the political agenda coming out from the Putin Regime. That so many Americans are complicitly toeing the Kremlin line is bad enough. But the fact that Young Republican groups are bringing in Russian assets to lobby members of Congress for the interests of the Russian government is just another black eye for an organization that has been receiving a ton of them.
C’mon, y’all can’t be surprised that the folks with the Nazi group chat are in league with Moscow, are you?
Orthodox folks? Not a fan of him. “Whitford has a bad case of narcissism.”
Not in the sense of an animal, as in the highest ranking authority within a Church
I don’t at all understand how the Orthodox Churches interconnect. But the OCU is subject to Constantinople and not Moscow. Yes, they call it Constantinople and to Istanbul, which will make They Might Be Giants confused.
I wonder if this is like non-denominational Christian? Do they have light shows too? I’m guessing not.
This would all be easier if they just accepted the primacy of the One, Truly, Holy, and Apostolic Church, but we haven’t had that since 1054, now have we?